Overall, while I like the idea, and I do use it a lot (when the networking works) there are some real annoyances, and some poor design decisions on the part of Google.
My number 1 complaint is poor networking, for one, it's only wireless/cellular connectivity, not even a hard wired ethernet jack. I can get by with that, but the wireless is very poor, and sometimes takes many, many attempts to log in. I have reported it many times, discussed my router, encryption type, etc, and over all the months have not seen a fix.
In fairness, however, they have fixed a few bugs that annoyed me, such as an oddly behaving touchpad, which was trouble for bit. I am still not a fan of the relatively simple touchpad, but have gotten used to it, and how it works with other keys to simulate the "right click" on better touchpads.
The battery life is superb...a full charge lasts about 8 hours, which is awesome, I love it.
Since much of my computer work is cloud based, I can actually get a lot done on this little device, it's been handy (again, when it connects), but I do think going for a tablet type of format would give the device a great chance of success in the current market, but, I suspect the touch screen would bring the device to a higher price point than they are shooting for.
While Chrome does not allow installation of other desktop programs, Google does have the web store that has a lot of cool applications, some for free, some for a charge. I have found some cool little apps. A guitar tuner and chord charter, radio streamer and other such things. One does have to be careful though, Google does a poor job of filtering out what works on the device you are browsing with. I installed a couple radio streamers that wound up not being able to work because it needed a plugin that I could install. I found that very sloppy
In the end, the Chrome notebook is just another netbook, no better or worse than any of the other dozens of netbooks available.
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